Small Business Digital Marketing Strategies

Use these small business digital marketing strategies to help your business grow.

The digital marketing industry is changing weekly. This can make marketing a small business seem like a daunting task. With little time to spare, small business owners are usually working in their business, not on their business. This can lead to low or even no growth, which is fatal to any business. To help you navigate the world of small business digital marketing, I asked five successful small business owners what their number one digital marketing tip is.

1. Impeccable Website Design

“One of the best things I did to effectively increase my marketing efforts was to invest in a well-designed site. My site is usually the first place that a potential will find and learn about my business. With a plain, cookie-cutter website, you are going to see less conversions because the competition on the internet between local businesses is so intense these days. To really ensure that you stand out among your competitors and stick in your potential customers mind, you need to have an effective website.” – Kensley Barrett, Law Offices of Kensley R. Barrett

2. Positive Reviews

“We used to be found by word of mouth. Other customers were so satisfied by our services that they told their friends and family. This was really all due to supreme customer service. However, today we are found due to our positive presence in the local search results. This is all due to asking past customers to leave reviews about our business on places like Yelp, our Facebook page, and our Google+ page. These reviews not only have a positive impact on convincing people that we’re the best, they also help give our website a boost in the local search results.” – John Brennan, Mold Removal Experts

3. Exit Pop-Up

“When we first launched the website for our fencing business, we didn’t know why so many people were visiting and leaving without contacting us. It wasn’t until we worked with a web developer to put in an exit pop-up that we noticed a big uptick in contact form submissions. This pop-up is triggered when the persons mouse hovers off of the web page. It gives them the ability to input a few of their details and get an instant quote. To date, it has been the single best feature we have added to our website in helping bring in more leads.” – John Reynolds, Reynolds Fence

4. Show-Off Your Projects

“When building our website, we knew we wanted to focus on the visual nature of our business, since we remodel kitchens. We didn’t realize that focusing on the images would be such a game-changer in helping us convert website visitors into new leads. Based on our analytics, our before and after pages are the most visited and often lead to the most form submissions.” – Brian Anderson, Kitchenbuilders.net

5. Get Listed

“Our industry is extremely competitive. There are literally hundreds of other construction companies within a 15-mile radius. To market our business effectively (without wasting our marketing budget), we needed to come up with a plan to increase our digital presence. We have found that one of our top referrers of high-converting traffic is coming from directories within our industry. This is because people like to do a lot of research before pulling the trigger and going with a construction company. I would recommend that every small business look for industry-relevant directories to get listed on. Yelp, Yellow Pages, Yahoo Local, Foursquare, Angies List, and Merchant Circle are a good start but keep an eye out for smaller, more niche directories too.” – Henry Cooper, O’Connor Construction

6. Focus On Building Relationships

“There are numerous lead-gen systems out there, but I’ve built my business by focusing on quality rather than quantity. Whether that is utilizing search engine optimization, social media, attending conferences or just keeping in touch with colleagues — it is important to invest the time and effort needed to really get to know the people I want to do business with. This type of long-term strategy takes more time than deploying a strategy to gain cold leads. But, by focusing on quality over quantity, the ROI on my lead generation increases exponentially.” –James Runkle, Drummond St. Strategy

7. Give Rather Than Sell

“No one likes to be sold. That’s why I don’t do it. Instead, I focus on giving new leads actionable information on the college application process as well as informing them how my business can help. I also offer to meet with them for a free evaluation. The majority of the leads that I bring it realize the value and their own vulnerability in doing this on their own after this meeting. The close rate after consultation is 80%.” –Larry Winters, Academy College Coaches